1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical switch device.
In recent years, large volume optical communications have rapidly spread. Therefore, optical cross-connect devices enabling control of path alteration of an optical route by making good use of for example wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technique are now becoming more important.
The present invention relates to an optical switch device preferable for mounting in for example an optical cross-connect device described above.
2. Description of the Related Art
As will be explained in detail later by referring to the drawings, the optical switch device to which the present invention relates is comprised of at least a substrate, an optical incoming port and optical outgoing port provided on the substrate, and a micro mirror placed between these optical incoming port and optical outgoing port.
For example, in the configuration shown in FIG. 18 (mentioned later), if it is intended to realize an optical switch device of 1000xc3x971000 (Nxc3x97M), it is necessary to form and arrange about 1,000,000 micro mirrors on the surface of the substrate. In this case, naturally it is necessary to arrange 1,000 optical incoming ports on the incoming side and arrange 1,000 optical outgoing ports on the outgoing side, so a fairly large sized mounting space must be provided on the substrate.
Even if there is one defective micro mirror on the large sized substrate, the entire substrate must be discarded. As described above, when forming 1,000,000 micro mirrors, there is a problem of the higher possibility of defects of the micro mirrors and therefore an extremely reduced yield of the optical switch device.
An object of the present invention is to provide an optical switch device capable of improving the yield.
The present invention makes it possible to realize a further economical optical switch device by this. Further, it also has the effect that a more compact device can be achieved and the effect that an optical switch excellent in expandability of optical incoming/outgoing ports can be realized.
To attain the above object, according to the present invention, there is provided an optical switch device comprised of: a plurality of planar switch modules arranged in a first direction and stacked in a second direction; and a coupler switch module, arranged in the second direction along each one side of the planar switch module, for selectively coupling the plurality of optical paths formed on one planar switch module and a plurality of optical paths formed on another planar switch module. By this, an optical switch device improved in yield and compact and excellent in the expandability of the optical incoming/outgoing ports is realized.